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We are, as you read this,
right in the middle of Railway Days. I hope you are taking the
opportunity to involve yourself in our rich railway history at the many
events and venues being offered by various groups. One only has to take
a trip to one of our museums and watch the reaction of visiting tourists
to know what kind of impression the railway, our museums, and this
community makes on them. I know that the Tourist Info Centre is fielding
record numbers of visitors this year and it’s great to see new people
visiting our community and enjoying the lifestyle that we all take for
granted.
At its recent meeting
Council received a letter from one of our Ambassadors, Christina Amelio,
who will be representing Revelstoke in the BC Ambassador Program in
Merritt. We wish her well, especially since she will be asking the
executive to consider the program coming to Revelstoke for its 2008
meeting. City Council is supporting her in this request.
Also included on the
Agenda at the last Council meeting was the building permit summary from
the Planning Department. This department has seen big increases in its
workload over the past couple of years and with already over 9 million
dollars in building permits so far this year I think that trend will
continue for some time. Although it is nice to see new construction and
buildings being fixed up, we are still looking forward to projects that
will alleviate the affordable housing problem in town. The newly formed
Affordable Housing Committee has a daunting task ahead of them and
hopefully we can start working towards some solutions in the area of
affordability.
One of the items of
interest was Council approving a motion to raise development fees in the
area of parking from $2500.00 per stall to $20,000.00 per stall. In
other words, if a development cannot for any of a variety of reasons
provide enough parking stalls, Council could decide in favour of the
developer paying for parking in lieu of providing it. The money
collected then goes into a parking lot fund and can only be used to
provide parking for future use.
Related to the increased
planning and development activity, the area of economic development is
increasingly active. More business licences are also being taken out,
and in this past month new businesses seem to focus on the construction
industry.
At its previous meeting
Council heard a delegation from the Shuswap District Labour Council
asking Council to support raising the minimum wage from the current
$8.00 per hour to $10.00 per hour immediately, with a further increase
to $11.00 per hour in one year. As well, a further request was to
eliminate the training wage and to tie further increases to an indexing
formula. This motion passed with a 4 to 2 vote, with myself and
Councillor Johnston voting against the motion.
As I go about my day to
day business I am always stopped and asked about city business. What is
the City’s policy on this or that? What’s happening on this piece of
property or that? As much as I think we do a lot to get the message out
via Mayor’s reports like this, radio shows, full page ads every week,
televised Council meetings, and information mailouts, people still have
questions. And that’s good. I would prefer that people stop and ask me,
one of your Councillors, or call City Hall and get the right answer.
We are holding two Public
Hearings on proposed Zoning Bylaw changes over the next few weeks and
will hold many more over the coming months and years. It is important
for people to know the facts, whether they attend these meetings or not.
For clarification, the City is not building a well or wells for the Big
Bend Development on the old VSA property, we have added a well as part
of long term planning to provide water to the community. There is no
proposal for a Casino development, and in the zoning application for the
former VSA property the proposed bylaw amendment specifically says that
a Casino is not a permitted land use. We have had many meetings on this
proposed development and have agreement that necessary service
improvements for this development will be at the developer’s cost.
Mark McKee
Mayor
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